SDSVP Investee Emeritus - Second Chance on KPBS Radio

From KPBS.org
April 13, 2009

There are some people and some programs that are trying to chip away at the system and make a difference. One such program, Prisoner Re-entry Employment Program is in San Diego and its run by a local organization called Second Chance. Last year, KPBS talked with Scott Silverman, founder and executive director of the Second Chance program, and Regina Nolte-Ware, a graduate of Second Chance's Prisoner Reentry Employment Program.

Click here to read more and listen to the broadcast.

Second Chance Annual Report Available Online

Congratulations to Second Chance, a former SDSVP Investee, on its 15th anniversary!

Second Chance provides job-readiness training and placement, mental health counseling and follow-up services to anyone 16 or over who is trying to overcome poverty, substance abuse or incarceration.

Click here to view Annual Report

Taking Second Chance to the Next Level

By Diane Rosenberg

“Social Venture Partners provided invaluable expertise in helping us determine how to take the agency to the next level.”
Scott Silverman, Executive Director

In its 15th year, Second Chance served over 4,500 clients wanting to break the cycle of unemployment, poverty, or incarceration. The agency’s nationally recognized STRIVE (Support and Training Result In Valuable Employees) job readiness program achieved unparalleled results, with over 70% of graduates attaining employment and 70% retaining their jobs after two years. Furthermore, each dollar invested in Second Chance programs returned five dollars back to the community—a 500% return on investment—via taxes paid by its clients and avoidance of incarceration costs through reduced recidivism.

Working with San Diego Social Venture Partners and the agency’s board of directors, Second Chance conducted a preliminary feasibility and outcomes study to determine how to serve more clients. During the next year, Second Chance will add a second classroom with the potential to double the clients served by its STRIVE job readiness program. The agency will also increase its transitional housing capacity by 50% to house clients while they seek employment and build savings to transition to permanent housing. Second Chance will provide two new additional programs: Financial Literacy and Addiction Relapse Prevention. Second Chance has also secured funding to conduct an in-depth outcomes study with leading experts to continue to improve the effectiveness of its programs. Having SDSVP Partners serve on the Board of Directors strengthened the link of capacity-building with strategic decisions and key initiatives.

Congratulations on SDSVP’s Former Investee, Second Chance, on great coverage in the UT!

A Second Chance at Success

From the San Diego Union-Tribune, July 24, 2008

It's not the type of exclamation you usually hear at a graduation.

“Where's my P.O.?” asked Adam Matschullat, using the shorthand for parole officer. “I told you I'd do it, right?”

Matschullat and his classmates had been accustomed to a path that involved judges and police officers, not guidance counselors and teachers. They hope that changed for good Friday, when they completed a course offered by Second Chance, an Encanto agency that aids the homeless and unemployed.

The 69 graduates, ranging from teens to those in their 50s, have battled drug problems and homelessness or racked up criminal records. Second Chance, however, offers them just that – an opportunity to learn life skills while complying with mandates from courts and other authorities.

To read the full story on this former SDSVP Investee, click here

Second Chance

Lead Partner: Diane Rosenberg

Ben & Jerry’s Second Chance PartnerShop has completed its second year of providing paid work experience and customer service skills for STRIVE graduates and at-risk youth in San Diego.
SDSVP helped Second Chance improve the efficiency of this social enterprise, create new marketing strategies and identify other options for expanding revenue. SDSVP’s work with Second Chance enabled the PartnerShop to nearly break-even, develop a profitable catering business and achieve the second highest sales per transaction of all PartnerShops in the country.

The PartnerShop gives Second Chance clients the opportunity to build personal confidence, create résumé credibility and reinforce the critical standards of behavior needed for becoming self-sufficient, contributing members of the community. Laura Bermudez, a STRIVE graduate, has overcome the “Rocky Road” of incarceration and “scooped” up success, learning valuable employment skills at the Ben & Jerry’s PartnerShop, then transitioning to a full-time job at Urban Corps. SDSVP is proud of its collaboration with Second Chance to take a “scoop” out of chronic unemployment, reincarceration and homelessness.

“The SDSVP Partners expertise in finance, marketing and operations helped us build a stronger social enterprise, which creates more job opportunities for STRIVE graduates. Their time, talent and treasury have been invaluable.”

Scott Silverman,
Executive Director

Second Chance

SDSVP supports the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Partnershop in Hillcrest, the social enterprise initiative of Second Chance. Second Chance provides the nationally recognized STRIVE program, a 120 hour job readiness and life skills course, to enable disadvantaged individuals to get and maintain longterm employment.

The goals of the Second Chance Ben & Jerry’s Partnershop are to: 1) provide job training, customer skills and service training in the food service and hospitality industry resulting in a career path with a livable wage; and 2) create a profitable social enterprise so proceeds can support other Second Chance programs.

SDSVP worked with Second Chance to improve the Partnershop’s inventory control systems, financial systems, implement a frequent customer program and identify new marketing strategies to increase sales.

“Second Chance continues to benefit from the SDSVP investment in our Ben & Jerry’s Partnershop on University Avenue in Hillcrest. Completing our second year of operation, we are approaching break-even financial status, efficiency gains and increased community awareness for Second Chance’s social enterprise which promotes workforce development for at-risk youth.”

Jo-Ann Jaffe, Director of Development
Second Chance

Business People Lend their Talents to Worthy Organizations

From The San Diego Union Tribune
5/14/2004

By Michael Kinsman

As a busy and successful businessman, Dale Stein used to have a way of dealing with the nonprofits that always seemed to hover nearby.

"I told them: 'You need money? I'll write you a check. And if I give you more than you need, will you leave me alone?,' " Stein said.

That was before he figured out that the best investment he could make in a nonprofit organization was one of time, not money.

Stein is one of 53 members of San Diego Social Venture Partners, a group of businesspeople who have banded together to help nonprofit organizations become more stable and sophisticated in their operations. The group formed after learning about the success of a similar partnership in Seattle.

The venture partners target social organizations by providing them funding, management expertise and strategic guidance over a three-year period. The group's goal is to help nonprofit groups operate more efficiently, so they spend more time on their missions instead of having to scramble for operating cash year after year.

"Every nonprofit wants to feed 5,000 people when they have the resources to feed 50," said group member Alan Sorkin, a former housing developer who now devotes his time to nonprofit pursuits. "But the passion that exists in these organizations is amazing. It is passion most for-profit CEOs would kill for in their businesses."

Stein, who has been involved in founding or running companies such as Westec Security, Technology Assurance Group, IPx Connect and Glacier Water, is quick to agree. Tapping into that passion, he finds himself re-energized.

"I've had a lot of successful businesses through the years," he said, "but the most enjoyment I've ever had in my life is working with a nonprofit."

Stein, 57, currently is the venture partners' chief liaison with the nonprofit Human Development Foundation, a San Diego organization that is tutoring highly gifted students from lower-income and non-English-speaking families through its Open Gate program at Oak Park School in San Diego.

In addition, foundation tutors work with the children's parents to help them understand the curriculum the children are following. These tutors often communicate to the parents through languages other than English.

"San Diego Social Venture Partners has enabled us to do things we would have never accomplished on our own," said Marjorie Fox, who heads the foundation.

"It makes us more sophisticated because we've had some very strong businesspeople look at our organization and tell us what we needed to do to be more effective," Fox said. "There's no way we could go out and hire the experts they have been able to bring us."

The venture partners currently work with six nonprofit agencies, adding two a year in a three-year rotation. The group helps organizations working with teen mothers, education, work-force training and justice issues, Sorkin said.

It recently began working with Second Chance, a downtown social service agency that bought a Ben & Jerry's ice cream shop in Hillcrest. Second Chance operates Strive, a tough-love program for the long-term unemployed thay will steer some of its graduates in jobs at Ben & Jerry's for a six-month period to help them reacclimate to the work force.

The venture partners found that many of the issues facing the Human Development Foundation were like those that affect many other nonprofits in San Diego. The organization labors year after year to gain enough funding to keep its program rolling.

Stein estimates that Fox was spending 60 percent of her time just to raise the $160,000 her organization needs to operate each year.

"She spends her time and energy just trying to stay in business," Stein said. "We wanted to free her from that and let her concentrate on her program. We basically see what the needs of the organization are and then figure out a way to fill them."

Recruiting assistance

When manpower or expertise is not readily available, the venture partners solicit help from other businesspeople. That's how Mike Richardson, a strategic planning specialist from Carlsbad, was recruited to assist the Human Development Foundation develop a long-range plan. Most of his work involves small and medium-sized, fast-growing firms, and Richardson found nearly an identical situation in the foundation.

"Most organizations are trying to grow so fast that they rarely take time to plan where they are headed," Richardson said. "They don't ever seem to have the resources they need to do that. With nonprofit organizations you have an even more acute set of circumstances with even less resources."

Richardson spent six months working with Fox to develop a strategic plan, eventually joing the Human Development Foundation's reconstituted and expanded board of directors. He said his involvement with the organization opened his eyes to the world of nonprofits.

"It really was an easy buy-in," he said. "It's a no-brainer when you see how your expertise can be used to help an organization. Who wouldn't want to help out once they see that?"

The venture partners also found two firms to help develop software for a computerized scheduling program for the foundation's tutors and at one point solicited donations of 26 personal computers for the gifted children whose families couldn't afford to buy them.

Marketing strategies

As part of its new strategic plan, the foundation will work with the venture group to develop a marketing strategy for creating a $2.5 million endowment that will allow the foundation to concentrate on expanding its educational programs.

Each member of the venture partners agrees to put up $5,000 each year, plus lending time and expertise to individual nonprofits.

Sorkin said he tries to find out what skills his members have and what interests they have.

"A lot of times you find someone who has skills, but is looking for something else to give them satisfaction," he said. "It isn't necessarily using the same skills you do eight hours a day."

Commitment levels vary. Some partners work a few hours a week with a nonprofit and others 30 or more. Many have spouses who participate.

"When you are asking someone who already probably has a packed schedule to do more, you want to make sure that their spouses approve," Sorkin said. "We found that by including them you eliminate the hurdle of them adding something else to their plate."

The venture partners carefully review nonprofits they may wind up supporting. Their goal is to find organizations doing socially beneficial work that have the potential to expand.

They want to provide some financial support, but larger amounts of business expertise.

"We can give them money – and do – but the management help we give them is more valuable," Sorkin said.

When he was approached about joining Social Venture Partners last year, Stein said he was immediately struck by the "sanity" the organization was taking into nonprofits.

He said finding people who share his values makes his experience with the venture partners more rewarding. He also appreciates that he is able to put his time and energy into a project to make sure his money was being wisely spent.

"The goal is to make the nonprofits we work with self-sufficient," he said. "We have a three-year commitment, and then we're gone. But if you really are committed to these nonprofits, why would you get out after three years?"